This
page displays five among the group of six spaces to the south of the central Hall, where (for some
reason) four are almost completely specialised ‘pure-art’ studios (egs:1 / 2
/ 3 / 5) - the only mono-functional grouping in the Silo :

FRED’s is a
two-chamber sculpture-studio with a minimal domestic
provision on a mezzanine over the access corridor.

ROLF
(who lives outside the Silo) has one of the three work-only
spaces: a one-chamber 2/3-width painting studio.

ERNST
(who lives outside the Silo) has one of the three work-only spaces: a
two-chamber full-width workshop and sculpture studio.

MILOU’s
is the earliest and one of the most elaborated on the Ground-Floor: a complex
two-chamber, full Silo-width apt, with a small workshop, an inner ‘guest-house’,
and a large glazed bedroom mezzanine.

YOURI's
single-chamber studio/apt, apart from its small live-in
domestic area, is as single-mindedly dedicated to art production as
Rolf's studio.

Fred’s
two chambered space is mainly confined to the W side of the south wing’s short
Gang corridor, over which one of the chambers extends as a small glass-enclosed
bed-/living-room mezzanine - his only concession to domestic needs in a space
otherwise exclusively sculpture-workshop (typical of the ‘pure-art’ bias of
the south end).
In this studio for the invention of natural-powered machines, the
quayside dukdalf wind-vane sculpture [pic]
was made.

This
is an example of the Silo used purely as work-space by someone who lives
outside. A small 2/3rd-Silo width single chamber with a single-minded painting-studio
function. Rolf has even blocked its only window is to accommodate the best easel
position and ensure controllable light.

At
the end of the short S Gang access-corridor are Ernst’s two chambers - the
first of the full-width spaces (blocking the others users access to the inner
Silo). The
first chamber is a workshop, with an office raised on a platform over its store;
the second chamber a sculpture studio (and a kind of stasis-space for the posing of
delicately anthropomorphic junk-constructs) - spanning the conveyor-gap in their
dividing walls is a 2m ‘flap-door’: scavenged bendy transparent-plastic sheets held
only-just-sufficiently rigid by an ad hoc web of wood-laths.

ERNST:
CHAMBER 5 - WORKSHOP E-END
(pic 6-94
/ to NE)

ERNST:
CHAMBER 5 - WORKSHOP E-END PLATFORM
(pic 9-94
/ to SE)

ERNST:
CHAMBER 5 -
WORKSHOP
(pic 6-94
/ to WWS)

ERNST:
CHAMBER 5 -
WORKSHOP
(pic 6-94
/ to WWS)

ERNST:
CHAMBER 5 - WORKSHOP
(pic 9-94 / to W)

Looking
down two-thirds of its length towards the dijk end. It exhibits a
wonderfully complex organisation of different ‘micro-functional-locations’
resulting from ‘harmonious-placement-via-personal- pragmatic-use’.

ERNST:
CHAMBER 5 -
WORKSHOP W-END
(pic 9-94
/ to W)

ERNST:
CHAMBER 5 -
WORKSHOP N-WALL E-END STORAGE
(pic 6-94
/ to N)

ERNST:
CHAMBER 5 - WORKSHOP : DOOR TO STUDIO
(pic 9-94 / to SSE)

Exquisite
economy !

ERNST:
CHAMBER 6 - STUDIO E-END
(pic 9-94 / to E)

ERNST:
CHAMBER 6 - STUDIO
(pic 6-94
/ to WWS)

On
the right is the entry from chamber 5.

ERNST:
CHAMBER 6 - STUDIO
(pic 6-94 / to WWS)

At
this chamber's far end is a short ladder to a small store-platform and a long ladder up
to an opened silo.

ERNST:
CHAMBER 6 - STUDIO W-END OPEN SILO
(pic 6-94
/ top EEN)
View down a long ladder to the floor at the west end of Ernst's studio,
through a hatch cut in the silo's base.
[In 1992 Horst opened this silo and began to convert it into a 'music-room'
- ref: "Horst's
silo"].

Begun in 1989,
the year of squatting, Milou’s was the first of the great
Ground-Floor apts - established in four chambers at the south-east end at a time
before spaces were defined. Its inner (north) boundary was finalised early:
walled-off from the rest of the Silo in autumn 1989 to confine the guests at
Milou’s “benefit-party” for the evicted squatters of the KNSM Eiland
encampment [1] . At that time the space was entered from the public dijk through
the base of the now separated South Tower and was without structures or fittings
except partial conveyor-trough coverings, a temporary bar, and its (existing)
wood-burning stove (which on that occasion consumed many of the Ground-Floor’s
wooden grain-spouting pipes - four survive in the apt as decor). During 1990
Milou condensed her space into two chambers by walling-off its southern half,
however retaining an access, under a new apt (Youri's), to the weird
ante-chamber of Paul’s
Tower and its exit through a pierced wall [Re:
GROUND-FL- p1 / CORNER-TWR].

Though squatted as a studio, by the
first year’s end embryonic domestic amenities had accumulated and in February
‘90 Milou began to live in it. She said that its form and use changed in
response to real-time social circumstances rather than planning: “the apt
needed a different space for different social configurations”, (the kitchen
changed position three times).

The apt tended to become a social concourse,
increasingly used as a meeting-place and work-shop by guests and others. In ‘91
Milou built herself a place to be private inside this home whose boundaries had
been lost: a small ‘house’ (11m2 from an apt of 109m2!) infilling the
4m cell at the dijk-end of the second chamber, raised 1·3m onto a platform
"to have a normal height [exterior] window” and with an inner-facing
facade of skipped windows. Its wood-stove blew back smoke however (on the E
side winds are bad for fires) and when the apt’s social use was more
controlled it became a guest-room with a gas heater. Facing it half way down the
chamber is another glazed facade (with impressive round-headed windows from the
restored Norder Kirk): a mezzanine bedroom that fills the upper end of the
remaining space.

With its access into the main body of the Silo blocked by its
adjacent two living-spaces (which like itself, fill the building’s whole
width) Milou’s must be entered directly from the outside, either through its
rear door from the Silo’s private quay or from the public dijk via a
distinctive ‘front-door’: one of the small windows that light the sunken
ground-floor. Mounting a wooden step up from the cobbles and bending through
this small mesh-protected window onto its inner ledge, one enters the looming
Silo at its grass-fringed base like a rabbit and
appears on the inside standing in the wall’s centre at the head of a rustic
ladder, backed by the window-glare like an epiphany - facing down a narrow tunnel-like room extending between
white-plastered walls to a gleam of water through a far door, diffused by a screen of pearly
glass: the dirt of
scavenged windows.

The complexity of this apt belies the simplicity of its
container: except for the water-door its two parallel chambers are identical, yet there is little sense of spatial regularity.
One clambers down from the dijk window into a long workshop, zoned first for metal then
for wood, through a door in the screen of windows into the apt’s kitchen and
its more ‘public’ sitting-place that opens to the
quay. Through the conveyor-gaps in the huge dividing wall is the dim second
chamber, whose small high end-windows serve secondary enclosures: the bedroom
mezzanine and the little ‘guest-house’ both filter daylight through their
inner glazed facades. I have seen this
space however dramatised by luxuriant lights: in the dark cave beneath the mezzanine on
a low conversational table candles may be flaming, as a flood-light lying like
casual litter behind the bedroom ladder projects across the screen-like central
wall a bright black-barred fan of orange, while up near blue ceiling-swags a tiny night-light flickers inside a crumbling hole.
[ref: video ... in prep]

The KNSM
Eiland squatter-camp of caravans and improvised dwellings began growing on
the sand around the artist-squat EDELWEIS in 19##;(the two quite unrelated occupations suffered from
mutual disrespect). In preparation for the KNSM housing development the camp
was physically moved by the City to a site off the Gevleweg (Houthavens,
west of the Silo).

The dijk outside Milou's
apt, whose front-entry window is open. The wooden
'step' plus the stone block which props it in place, and the coloured
cement 'figurehead' to its left, were all street-found.

Grouped
on the dijk are seats and improvised table: the ‘cast-skin’ of a
conversation, its forming terminated instantly the participants left.

Such forms
are retrospective in subject-matter. Unlike designed tools whose use is
perceived as the (future) potential of their form, these are
not designed but 'automatically' accumulated as the
means of an ongoing need, which when completed leaves them speaking the
behaviour they enabled, not as a future possibility but as actualised
content.

MILOU: DIJK
EXTERIOR - CHAMBER 10 ENTRY WINDOW
(pic 6-94
/ to NE)

On
the dijk outside Milou's apt - its 'front' entry window is open.

MILOU:
CHAMBER 10- WORKSHOP
(pic 9-94
/ to WWS)

At
the far end is the dijk entry window [ref previous pics] with its 2m wooden
steps to the floor.

Milou's
first ('un-competent') structural project done soon after she began to
live in the space (1989/90), when it was still open to the silo's
south-end (its future boundary possibly already sketched with a screen of
curtains).

The 4·5m high screen that
separates the workshop from the kitchen/sitting space is a wall of five disparate windows and two glazed
doors, selected from many that were “bussed-in” from local demolitions
(“masses" more are stored in the board-covered conveyor-troughs). A
hinged flap above its door can extend the access height. The
whole is stiffened by full-height 10x15cm wood.

Its dynamic De Stijl like rhythm of rectangles is another example
of a ubiquitous sense of space-design apparent in Dutch culture from
vernacular to art.

The
'Baroque' chair was one of several saved from the street (as a city fashion for such things receeded
many were dumped).

MILOU:
CHAMBER 10 - LIVING-SPACE TO WORKSHOP ENTRY
(pic 9-94
/ to W)

MILOU:
CHAMBER 10 - LIVING-SPACE
(pic 6-94
/ to NE)

The kitchen/sitting space at the rear of the workshop. Its exit to the narrow quay has two layers of doors: Milou cut the
existing door in half and replaced its central panels with glass
(stiffening them with diagonal planks), she also fitted an outer steel and
glass rolling door (one of six brought from “Het Veem” a nearby
re-conned squat). The
concrete floor was painted a beautiful cobalt blue (a colour Milou claims
deters flies) which subsequently became a Silo ‘fashion’.

Behind
the sink the conveyor-path wall is set back an extra 80cm to
accommodate cupboards.

MILOU:
CHAMBER 10 - STOVE WITH WALL DRAWINGS
(pic 6-94
/ to WWN)

The
dancing figures on the wall were drawn by a visitor and ignored by Milou.

MILOU:
CHAMBER 10 - STOVE & CHAIRS
(pic 8-93
/ to WWN)

Made
for the 1989 KNSM squatter-camp party this 2.4m high wood-burning stove was welded
by Bart from the dissembled parts of an arcane device (a 'Broekstuk': “trousers”:
usually bifurcated!): the spout-like chimney/radiator that now juts from
its top was reversed and hinged inside its lower part, switching the flow
of grain through a choice of five holes in its rounded base (now sealed
with sheet-steel). Incompletely stripped of its machines the Silo yielded
many such part-objects which, detached from their functional context,
acquired a spurious mystery.

MILOU:
CHAMBER 10 - STOVE MODIFIED VERSION
(pic 9-94
/ to WWN)

In
19## Jochem modified Bart's stove, sealing its original low door and opening one
on the upper right side, whose higher position allowed more wood to be loaded.
He also also fitted into the lower chimney a water-can that supplied heated
water through a tap.

The
console table is a street-found slab of Italian
granite supported on a Silo tube.

Through
the conveyor opening is chamber 2.

MILOU:
CHAMBER 10 - E-END ACCESS TO 2nd CHAMBER 9
(pic 9-94
/ to N)

Chamber
2 is viewed through
the conveyor path opening, under the extended and glazed bedroom
mezzanine. The conveyor
opening on its far side is blocked with wooden grain directing chutes:
Milou's "first wall".

Up on the bedroom mezzanine that began in autumn 1989
as a mere post-supported platform projecting 2m from the rear of the second
chamber; extended in ‘91 and again in ‘93 to the present 7·5m glazed
floor.

MILOU:
CHAMBER 9 - MEZZANINE BEDROOM
(pic 6-94
/ to NE)

MILOU:
CHAMBER 9 - MEZZANINE BED
(pic 6-94
/ to EEN)

The
huge “gazing head” is an illusion projected
on a duvet draped casually through a bifurcated silo-discharge tube.
Such visions are common here, where the mind is always on the watch
for meanings to fill the strangeness, easily projecting into objects
uncircumscribed by ‘neatness’ or ‘design’. The glowing folded mattress with its flanking sculptural-log and
painting evokes a ritual setting that endorses ‘dreaming’.

MILOU:
CHAMBER 9 - UNDER-MEZZANINE CLOTHES STORE
(pic 6-94
/ to NE)

MILOU:
CHAMBER 9 - TO W END 'HOUSE'
(pic 6-94
/ to WWS)

MILOU:
CHAMBER 9 - W END WITH 'HOUSE' FACADE
(pic 3-10-93
/ to WWS)

Milou's
little 1991 'house' which fills 4m at the chamber's west end began as a mere
1.2m platform on cross beams (with storage under). Enclosed with a facade in
1992 as a refuge from apt visitors, it
became a 'guest room'.

This
living-space spans the Silo's narrowed south end. Originally part of Milou's
huge space, it was separated when she reduced her apt to two chambers in 1990.
However she retained a connection from her apt to the Silo's most southern chamber-12 (location of
its water pump and the base of Paul's tower), reducing the western third of
Youri's apt to a platform over this access passage.

Entered
from the raised south portion of the quay, up short steps, through its east
window, onto a small platform over a kitchen - the main area is a pit between
two staired platforms.

YOURI:
CHAMBER 11 - STUDIO/APT
(pic 9-94
/ to W)

View
from the small entry platform, towards its west-end platform over a
passage between chambers 10 and 12.